Los Angeles Zoo. (Photo: lazoo.org - city of Los Angeles)
Stop Hiring Interns Based on Race, Pacific Legal Tells Los Angeles Zoo
‘Creating a just and sustainable world where people and wildlife thrive, together’
By Katy Grimes, March 23, 2024 6:01 am
“Creating a just and sustainable world where people and wildlife thrive, together.”
That is the “vision” of the Los Angeles Zoo. However, they need to revisit their mission to be “just,” which is equitable and nondiscriminatory.
The Los Angeles Zoo, which is owned by the City of Los Angeles and receives 1.8 million visitors per year, selects its paid interns based on their race.
Pacific Legal Foundation sent a letter to the Zoo this week, pointing out that its discriminatory internship program likely violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as well as national and state civil rights laws.
The Zoo’s website explains that “this internship program is specifically available to applicants who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color, people with varying abilities, and/or the LGBTQIA+ communities.”
LGBTQIA+ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (one’s sexual or gender identity), intersex, and asexual/aromantic/agender.
The Supreme Court has long held that racial discrimination is presumptively unconstitutional. To justify its race-based hiring, the Zoo would have to prove it “further[s] compelling governmental interests” and is “narrowly tailored” to those interests, according to the Court’s 1995 ruling in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña.
The Zoo is unlikely to pass that test, PLF says.
In the letter, addressed to the Zoo’s executive director, PLF attorney Jack Brown writes:
In the context of racial discrimination, the only interest that is sufficiently compelling to satisfy strict scrutiny is “remediating specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute.” Students for Fair Admissions, 600 U.S. at 207. The Zoo is unlikely to have specific evidence of any past racial discrimination against interns on its part that violated the Constitution or a statute. Id. The United States Supreme Court explained in Students for Fair Admissions that “diversity” goals are not a compelling reason to discriminate based on race. Id. at 214. And even before Students for Fair Admissions, remedying “societal discrimination” or “underrepresentation” in the zoo and conservation fields are not valid reasons to adopt a facially discriminatory program.
Given the grave constitutional concerns at issue please let me know by April 20, 2024, whether the Zoo intends on amending its hiring criteria for the Paid Internship Program so that race and/or ethnicity will no longer be factors for hiring in the future.
PLF works to dismantle arbitrary government barriers to opportunity. PLF is currently representing clients across the country in challenging race- and sex-based selection processes for public contracting, seats on regulatory boards, housing programs, business licenses, education programs, and more.
Limiting opportunities to people of certain races violates the Constitution. The Los Angeles Zoo has just been reminded of that.
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Discriminating and creating division by grouping people on the basis of prescribed victimhood (racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) is a typical ploy used by the radical left, the criminal Democrat mafia and their CCP and WEF globalist masters. Thankfully organizations like the Pacific Legal Foundation are there to stop these blatant violations of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause as well as national and state civil rights laws. The LA Zoo needs to be boycotted and the Zoo’s administration need to be publicly shamed:
Chief Executive Officer & Zoo Director: Denise M. Verret (she/her/hers)
Deputy Director: Mei Kwan
Zoo Administration:
Carol Armstrong, PhD, Director of Sustainability and Capital Programs
John Goodwin, Acting Director of Construction and Maintenance
Mae Huey, Acting Director of Human Resources
Dan Keeffe (he/him), Director of Learning and Engagement
Dominique Keller DVM, PhD, DACZM, Chief Veterinarian & Director of Animal Health and Wellness
Jake Owens, PhD, Director of Conservation
Max Pulsinelli, Chief Communications Officer
Beth Schaefer, General Curator and Director of Animal Programs
Zoo Commission:
Karen B. Winnick, President
Bernardo Silva, Vice President
Daryl Smith
Elnie Vannatim
Richard Lichtenstein, Ex-Officio Member
(https://lazoo.org/about/zoo-administration/)
Who is Denise M. Verret, the director of the Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens? She is the first female African American director of an Association of Zoos and Aquariums-accredited institution. She majored in Administrative Studies at UC Riverside, graduating in 1988. Verret hence obtained an internship in the Office of the City Administrative Officer and continued to work for the city for several decades. Verret was serving as interim zoo director when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti nominated her for the position of director; John Lewis, zoo director, had retired in January 2019. Verret was confirmed to the seat of director of the Los Angeles Zoo on June 28, 2019 by the LA City Council.
As a former intern, you’d think that Ms. Verret wouldn’t like it if she had been rejected for an internship because of her race? What a hypocrite? She must be a Democrat?
(https://beverlypress.com/2019/07/new-zoo-exec-makes-history/)
Glad you posted this information, TJ. These ne’er-do-wells who never build but only destroy had better get their act together or a tragedy resulting from someone hired for stupid (and unconstitutional) reasons is in the offing in the form of an irritated lion who isn’t being handled properly. Idiots!
And of COURSE former L.A. Mayor Eric (Yoga Pants) Garcetti’s name would come up in the midst of this, naming this woman as zoo director. Man! Can anyone name ONE THING this wuss ever did right in all the years he was mayor?
By the way, no need to boycott the zoo; it’s a nasty place and still was last time I visited when I swore I would never go back. I’m sure attendance is thin and they are losing money and I would bet a lot that any family who desires a day at the zoo is probably willing to drive all the way down to the San Diego Zoo and avoid L.A. entirely. Unless the San Diego Zoo has ALSO gone to seed since I last checked.
I’m grateful for everything the Pacific Legal Foundation does in defence of freedom and the Constitution. I encourage everyone to make a contribution to them at https://pacificlegal.org/donate/
And as always I’m grateful for Katy Grimes for her relentless daylighting of stories like this. I didn’t know the Alphabet Soup mob had become so inclusive. I was an English major and I had to look up the word “aromantic.” I’m certain these perverts will come up with more letters to add to the soup.